Vandersteen 4

Upon consultation with experts, well in fact bridged amps do make the noise floor worse as originally stated. So STRONGLY do not recommend Eagle 400s for Vandy 4a. The improvement with diodes, ICs, and blackgates were substantially audible and improved the overall sound floor quite remarkably. Schottky diodes in the crossover made the system sound almost like it was driven only with tube amps (currently use 300b and 6b4g push pull amps for triamping 4a). Bridged amps would be a step in the wrong direction since they would worsten the noise floor. With any of these sub powered systems with active crossovers, sound floor/noise floor is weakened due to additional amplification stages and crossover electronics. Despite claims that noise floor (sound floor) is less important in the bass, these upgrades have shown me that it does matter greatly.

my black Friday wanderings at stereo stores...found a pair of rebuilt model 4 at Hawthornes in Seattle....under a grand...
they are big and heavy..i did not listen to them..
what a blast from past that place is..

Just seeing this fascinating string, years after the last post. For some reason I thought I was the only one who knew about the Vandersteen 4's...apparently not.

I bought a used pair of 4s in 1987 or so. They were $3K used at that time (arrived on a semi-trailer; shipping cost $600 from west coast). It was love at first sight. To this day I've never heard anything equal them, not that I tried too hard. My audio jones went into deep remission after we moved to a new house in 1990.

Anyway, I had them biamped with an RM-9 100wpc tube amp on mids/uppers; and a 200wpc SS amp on the subs (started w/a modded Adcom, ended up w/a Perreaux). I thought the sound was spectacular. I had no problem at all hearing what 1st order crossovers can do. The dynamics were explosive, but friendly to the ear somehow. There was real impact, especially in the low registers (those 2 subs shook the house)--but it somehow didn't feel like I was getting pummeled by Gitmo interrogators, the way some high-power speaker systems can feel.

* Not long after, I had Modjeski modify his amp so that each of the 8  EL-34s (or KT66s/KT88s--I had them all) could be stitched to triode operation (vs std. pentode). The effect was astounding...still the best sound I've ever heard from an amp. And the 4s just faithfully transmitted all that tube wonderfulness...

I remember once having an orchestral recording on (VPI TT/Grado moving iron cartridge, a good one). It was pretty loud. A quiet passage came, and the percussionist struck a triangle. It was insanely lifelike, thrilling. I bet nobody ever went as crazy for a 1-note triangle solo as I did--and it was all because those speakers tripped my audio pleasure circuits so.

I still have them (all my gear from those day). Haven't unpacked them in 27 years. I'd be afraid to actually power the 4's now. I'll bet the surrounds are gone.

I remember talking with Richard Vandersteen circa 1989, and he was offering to mod the midrange (take out stock midrange and replace w/newer module he'd developed). I now realize he was talking about at least partially updating my 4's to 4A's, though I'm not sure he was even using that model designation yet.

LOVED those speakers!

Nice to hear such positive remarks on the 4. To fire them up again you'd have to check the isobaric subs for sure. The rest may be fine if you've stored them in reasonable conditions. Might make nice front channels of a home theatre system.

there are some references to that model on the ask Richard part of the website,  some of the drivers are now unobtainable so FYI